My Rural Story

What is different about working in rural and remote areas?

who you are, that doesn’t necessarily mean knowing where you come from or how you are, not the prosaic stuff, but more knowing who you are. Your professional, cultural identity, that’s really important because things tend to be heightened in a rural or remote context and you need to know who you are because you’ll be thrown into situations where you need to be able to fall back and know yourself and be strong. You need to be strong and be independent and be a culturally safe practitioner; it’s absolutely crucial. So that would be the first thing, to know yourself and know who you are. Secondly would be to find out a bit about the place where you’re going. Do your homework, do a bit of research. Is it a farming community, a mixture of hippies and farmers and rural politicians that only visit come election time or is it an Indigenous community? Was it a reserve? Just get to know a little bit about it so you know what you’re getting yourself in for. So you don’t get there and find out, much to your shock and dismay, that there are no caravan parks of hotels or shops with interesting little bits and pieces in there. The third thing would be, to mind your manners. By that I mean to be respectful. Most of the things that you will think of when you go out there, people would have done before or at least thought of. So it’s part of finding out the history.

There’s a lot of differences. I think probably the main thing, at least for me, and the people that thrive in those situations, is the fact that in a rural and remote context, you have the opportunity to develop relationships and engage with the community. In fact, it would be really hard to avoid that when working in a remote context. In an urban context, you tend to be in your little work bubble and then you’re home or your social life bubble, and the two don’t often connect. It’s easy to stick with your own kind in an urban context. What advice would you give to students going on a rural or remote placement ? Number one, know who you are and have a strong sense of self. Know exactly ‘After spending long amounts of time in rural and remote communities I realised that I actually knew less than when I started. I think that was probably a key moment.’

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